"God is not our life coach"

For the Christian, marriage should be a covenant relationship, between a man and woman, that is designed to last for life — with the only scriptural grounds for divorce being adultery or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. Yet our pews are full of divorced Christians, and many of these are not people who’ve divorced, repented of the sin of divorce, then sought forgiveness and redemption (though some are). Instead, they are people who’ve divorced wrongly, sought acceptance of their choice, salve for their emotional pain, and now seek to remain in fellowship — on their terms.

In fact, an entire industry of psychobabble has built up around our millions of “Christian” divorces. Adultery has been redefined to include “financial infidelity” (said one woman of her spendthrift husband) and abandonment morphs into “emotional abandonment” (said another of her aloof spouse). “God doesn’t want me to be miserable” becomes a declarative, authoritative statement, and friends nod along lest they be thought guilty of the one unforgivable sin: judgment.